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Oscar had always thought of Lando as someone fundamentally unserious.
Not in a mean way - just as a matter of taxonomy. There were people who treated the world like a chessboard and people who treated it like a playground. Lando belonged firmly in the latter category. He was bright, kinetic, the kind of person who could make even boredom look like a performance art.
Oscar, meanwhile, had built his life on the art of restraint. Engineering major, scholarship kid, precise note-taker. His emotions ran like carefully measured fuel - efficient, controlled, occasionally volatile but never wasteful.
So naturally, they became friends.
They'd met in a shared course - "Intro to Computational Design," which Lando took because "it sounded cool and had computers in it." He spent most lectures doodling in the margins or whispering dumb jokes to Oscar until the professor shot them both looks of weary disdain. Oscar had tried to dislike him at first. It would have been easier.
But Lando's laugh, loud and unselfconscious, had a gravitational pull. And when he grinned at Oscar after class, calling him mate in that easy British way, Oscar had found himself smiling back.
Against his better judgment. Against his carefully structured equilibrium.
They were an unlikely pair - Lando with his scattershot enthusiasm, Oscar with his quiet discipline. Yet somehow, they balanced each other out: Lando dragged Oscar to pub quizzes and house parties. Oscar made sure Lando submitted assignments before the deadline (or at least within the general vicinity of it).
By the end of their second year, it was simply assumed that where one went, the other followed.
Then came the charity event.
It started, as most bad ideas do, with a group chat. The university's motorsport society (which Lando treated as his personal fan club) had decided to raise money for cancer research. Someone suggested a drag show. Someone else pointed out that most of them couldn't even spell "drag," let alone perform it. Which, predictably, made Lando volunteer.
Oscar had been there when it happened - sitting beside him in the campus café, mid-sip of his flat white, when Lando typed, I'll do it if we raise over £500.
They hit the target within an hour.
"You've really done it now," Oscar said, shaking his head.
Lando grinned, as if he'd just discovered gravity. "How hard can it be?"
He found out two weeks later, when he realized that heels are not a joke, contouring is witchcraft, and that wigs are both too hot and never sit right. Oscar had watched it all from the periphery - part amused, part bewildered, part... something else he didn't examine too closely.
The night of the show arrived on an unseasonably warm April evening. The student union hall was packed, the air heavy with perfume and anticipation. Oscar hadn't planned to go. Crowds weren't really his thing. But when Lando texted ‘you're coming, right?‘, he found himself walking there anyway.
He sat near the back, hands clasped, trying to ignore the pounding in his chest.
Then the lights dimmed.
And Lando walked onstage.
If Oscar hadn't known it was him, he might not have believed it. Lando - usually all skinned knees and messy curls - was suddenly luminous. A sequined silver dress hugged his body with improbable precision, his hair was hidden beneath a honey-blonde wig that brushed his shoulders. His lips were painted a deep, defiant red.
He looked - and Oscar's brain stuttered trying to process this - beautiful.
Not beautiful in a ridiculous way, not as a joke or a parody, but earnestly. The audience whooped and laughed and clapped, but Oscar just stared, feeling something come unmoored inside him.
Lando strutted across the stage, swaying his hips with surprising grace, lip-syncing to a pop song Oscar didn't recognize. He was clearly having the time of his life.
And Oscar - logical, level-headed Oscar - was undone.
He didn't fall in love at that moment. That would've been too clean. Too cinematic.
But he felt something shift. Something irreversible.
When the song ended, Lando bowed low, nearly tripping in his heels. The audience roared. Oscar clapped too, a little too long, his palms stinging.
After the show, the crowd spilled out into the courtyard. The night air was thick with laughter, cheap beer, and the smell of fake eyelashes being peeled off. Oscar hovered near the edge, unsure whether to stay.
And then Lando appeared - still in the dress, shoes in hand, cheeks flushed from adrenaline and drinks.
"Osc!" he said, grinning. "You came!"
"Would've been hard to miss," Oscar said. His voice sounded strange, like it didn't belong to him.
"Be honest," Lando said, twirling once for effect. "How'd I do?"
Oscar's brain offered several answers at once - you looked incredible, I couldn't take my eyes off you, I think I'm in trouble - but all that came out was, "You were... surprisingly coordinated."
Lando laughed. "High praise from Mr. Precision himself."
There was a pause, a small pocket of silence between them that felt charged somehow. Lando's makeup was smudged, his lipstick half-worn away, and yet he still glowed. Oscar wanted - absurdly - to reach out and fix the stray lock of wig hair falling across his forehead.
Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets. "You should probably change before you catch a cold."
Lando smirked. "You just don't want anyone else seeing me like this."
It was a joke. It had to be. But Oscar couldn't quite make his laugh sound natural.
They walked back to the dorms together, the night buzzing around them. Every now and then, Lando would hum under his breath, or trip slightly on the pavement, and Oscar would steady him by the elbow. His skin felt too warm where they touched.
Later, after Lando disappeared into his room with a cheerful night, mate, Oscar lay awake staring at the ceiling. He told himself it was just the novelty of it all - the absurdity of seeing his best friend dolled up in sequins and confidence.
Except it wasn't.
The image lingered: Lando onstage, radiant and free, every bit of his chaotic energy distilled into something strangely magnetic. Oscar replayed it in his mind until it blurred into something half dream, half ache.
By morning, he'd decided not to think about it again.
That decision lasted approximately two days.
Because Lando, being Lando, refused to let the moment die quietly. He made his drag debut his entire personality for a week - showing Oscar photos ("Look at me here, I actually nailed that pose!"), joking about doing it again ("Maybe I'll start a side career, you think I could pull it off?"), and even keeping the wig perched on his desk like a trophy.
Oscar tried to act normal. He really did. But every time Lando said something like 'guess I make a decent girl, huh?', his throat went dry.
It wasn't that Oscar hadn't thought about men before. He had. Quietly. Theoretically. But it had always seemed abstract, a line he didn't need to cross.
Until now, when his best friend in a sparkly dress had somehow rewritten the circuitry of his brain.
He started noticing things - the curve of Lando's smile, the way he bit his lip when he was concentrating, how easily he touched people, including Oscar. How unfair it was that someone could be both infuriating and... lovely.
The realization came with a kind of bitter amusement. He'd managed to avoid all the usual university clichés - no ill-fated crushes, no messy love triangles - and yet here he was, completely and hopelessly stuck on Lando.
Who, of course, had no idea.
Weeks passed. The drag photos circulated online, the event faded into memory, and life resumed its normal rhythm. But for Oscar, normal had shifted. Lando would sprawl across his bed during study sessions, humming tunelessly, and Oscar would have to look away, pretending to focus on his notes while his heart tried to throttle him from inside his chest.
Once, Lando asked him - out of nowhere - "You ever been in love, Osc?"
Oscar's pen froze mid-sentence.
"I- uh. Not really."
Lando grinned. "What, never? You're like a monk."
"Not everyone falls in love with the first person who makes them laugh," Oscar said, aiming for teasing but landing somewhere closer to defensive.
"Maybe you just haven't met the right person," Lando replied, shrugging, unaware of the quiet disaster those words triggered.
Oscar forced a smile. "Yeah. Maybe."
After that, he tried harder to bury it. Because what else could he do? Tell Lando? Risk ruining the one friendship that actually felt easy and real? No.
Better to keep it locked away, a quiet, stupid thing.
Still, sometimes he caught himself staring when Lando wasn't looking. And sometimes Lando would grin at him with that open, guileless affection, and it would hurt in the softest possible way.
The semester ended, and with it, the closeness of proximity. Lando went home to England for the summer. Oscar stayed behind for an internship. They kept in touch - texts, occasional phone calls - but it wasn't the same. The distance made it easier to breathe, and harder at the same time.
One night, scrolling through his phone, Oscar stumbled on a video someone had posted of the drag show. There was Lando, glittering and laughing, spinning under the lights. Oscar watched it twice. Then again.
And then he laughed to himself - softly, helplessly - because what else was there to do?
He'd fallen for his best friend.
Not just his best friend, but his best friend in a sparkly silver dress, singing to a crowd of half-drunk students. And it had been one perfect, ridiculous moment that he would never quite recover from.
There was no grand confession, no cinematic ending, no moral epiphany. Just the memory of a night that would always shimmer faintly at the edges of his mind.
Sometimes, when the ache got too close, he'd joke about it in his head: You idiot. You fell for Lando in lace.
And then he'd smile - because even if it hurt, there was something almost beautiful about it.
Because some crushes weren't meant to be lived out. Some were meant to stay suspended in that single shining moment - a laugh, a look, a song under stage lights.
And if he was honest with himself, Oscar wouldn't have changed it.
Not the laughter, not the confusion, not even the ache that lingered like the aftertaste of something sweet.
Because for all his careful plans and logic, he'd been caught off guard by something entirely human - a boy, a dress, and the sudden, ridiculous realization that he'd never see his best friend quite the same way again.
He'd move on, of course. Life would continue, as it always does. But sometimes, when he saw sequins in a shop window or heard laughter ring across a courtyard, he'd feel that familiar tug - wistful, wry, fond.
And he'd think, not without affection, I'll probably pine forevermore for Lando in lace.